Has Anyone Here Caught Drabek?

--esthetically, of course, it ended last spring--Floyd Bannister was lolling around the White Sox clubhouse, musing about 1987.

``We`ll be a lot better,`` the left-hander promised. ``Our pitching has come together, Richard Dotson will be even healthier than he was this year, plus we`ll have Drabek. A lot of guys will be fighting for spots on the rotation in spring training.``

Drabek?

``Doug Drabek from the Yankees,`` Bannister mentioned. ``He`s the player to be named later in the deal we made with New York. Doesn`t everybody know that?``

Easy for him to say. We`ll get to the bottom of this.

When Ron Kittle, Joel Skinner and Wayne Tolleson were traded to New York on July 29 for sore-kneed Ron Hassey and Carlos Martinez, an unknown prospect who sounds like a Mexican restaurant, the bereaved patrons of 35th and Shields felt as though their squad had been short-sheeted. However, comma, Ken ``Hawk`` Harrelson, then the director of baseball operations, cautioned that the White Sox would be receiving a name to be played later who would make it all worthwhile.

A pitcher?

``Can`t say,`` Harrelson said then.

A pitcher?

``A pitcher,`` confessed Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.

Drabek?

``Can`t say,`` Reinsdorf elaborated.

That was that, and that was also then, which is a lot different than now. Drabek, who might or might not have been ticketed for Chicago, just the other day stopped in Pittsburgh, where he`s apparently staying, as a Pirate, having been traded there in exchange for Rick Rhoden, who is also a pitcher, now with the Yankees, and apparently staying there.

What can you tell us about Drabek?

``He`s a good one,`` Harrelson said Wednesday. ``A big, strong right-hander who was as tough a guy as they had there in New York at the end. Better than his record. I like him a lot.``

Then he was the player to be named later, once upon a time?

``I didn`t say that,`` Harrelson said. ``Madden said that, maybe after George told him. That would have killed it, even if it was alive, because you can`t do that, trade for a player to be named later who`s on another team`s active major-league roster when a trade is made, which Drabek was. Where it came from, whether it came from George, I don`t know.``

George? Madden?

``George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, who I made the original deal with,`` Harrelson went on. ``And Bill Madden is the sportswriter there who wrote that Drabek was the guy coming to the White Sox.``

And George told that to Bill about Doug without telling Ken?

``I did not,`` Steinbrenner said from his Tampa office. ``Harrelson started that rumor in Chicago. There`s no way it was Drabek. No deal. You can`t do that. Hawk knows the rules. We`re going over the possibilities now. It`ll be a good player, I can assure you. Maybe from the minor leagues, maybe someone who came up to our big club toward the end of the season. But it won`t be what Madden wrote because he`s in Pittsburgh now.``

Yes, but why did Madden write it then?

``Because I confronted George with what Ken had been telling people in Chicago about Drabek,`` Madden said from his home in New Jersey. ``He told me to put it right in my paper, the New York News, as if he wouldn`t mind seeing it in print. I did write it, not because he told me but because he knocked the rumor down as untrue. Did he pull a fast one on Harrelson, by telling him he`d deliver Drabek when George knew it wasn`t going to happen? Who knows in this business? But Drabek is a lot better than Lindsey.``

Lindsey?

``He`s the guy I figure the White Sox are going to wind up with,``

Madden said. ``Bill Lindsey. He`s a catcher-outfielder-first baseman who batted .261 last year at Albany. He`s 26. He`s been in the minor leagues for the last six years.``

Six years? The White Sox go from waiting for Drabek to settling on a career minor leaguer?

``It is a little confusing,`` noticed Larry Himes, who has taken over for Harrelson. ``If it weren`t a little confusing, it would have been done by now. I know a lot of people in the White Sox organization were a little shocked when Drabek went to Pittsburgh. Everything I`d heard was that Drabek was coming here, which would have been nice. Good pitcher.``

Were Jerry Reinsdorf and cohort Eddie Einhorn among those who were shocked?

``I`d say so,`` Himes said. ``But they`re talking with George now about working it out. This all started before I came aboard here, so Jerry and Eddie are handling that. But I have a list of Yankee players in front of me, and we`d like to get one or two before the winter meetings begin next week. We have a few holes to patch. Whoever it is, though, obviously it won`t be Drabek, and I kind of doubt it will be Rhoden, heh-heh. It will get straightened out. Pretty soon.``

``I don`t really want to get involved in that other thing now,`` Hawk said. ``I`ve been relaxing a lot. Had a great Thanksgiving with the wife and kids. By the way, how was that Skins Game out in Palm Springs? What a golf course.``

Which reminds us. The last person we saw at the Palm Springs airport before returning to Chicago was Don Drysdale, the White Sox broadcaster. You`ll never guess what was on his mind.

``Hey,`` he said, ``what`s going on in Chicago? I thought Drabek was coming to the Sox. I see he just went to Pittsburgh. How do you figure that out?``